He should have been out.

He was supposed to pick up a new piece for a faulty keg; he accepted to run the errand, wanting to have an excuse to get out of the Drop for a while, get away from all the memories trapped within those walls – and, maybe, from Silco too. From his absence, more so, because he hasn't missed the way his footsteps echoed upstairs, on several occasions, only to stop at the top of the stairs. As if Silco suddenly remembered Vander was downstairs, behind the counter, and then specifically chose to turn tail. Vander doesn't quite know what to make of it.

In the end, however, as he was still busy with the dishes when the time to leave and walk up to that workshop a few blocks away arose, and Ran said they could do it… He told them to go in his place. It was a split-moment decision. Pure luck.

At first, he didn't recognize the noise for what it was. Denial, maybe, because that was unmistakably a blast. He waited, listening to any other noises, his motion suspended as he waited for something else to happen. Then, as nothing happened and he came to the conclusion that was definitely not normal, he thought that a pipe had burst – which wouldn't be out of the question, with how faulty plumbing in Zaun generally is – or maybe even a keg that wasn't sealed properly… In all the years he had spent as the de-facto leader of the Lanes, there hasn't been any direct attack on his person or the Last Drop. Perhaps that's why it didn't come to his mind earlier – why he needed to see the damaged board on the ceiling, in a corner of the back room, to realize something had exploded upstairs.

And upstairs, in that specific place… that was Silco's office.

He ran upstairs, to find the sisters in the corridor – hearing their voices before he even laid eyes on them. They had to have come back after they also heard the blast. There was smoke coming around the door. Vi tried to stop her sister as she reached for the handle, ready to storm in there, her blue eyes blown impossibly wide, mouth open and teeth bared. She was physically weaker than Vi, and yet the older sister was struggling to hold her back in her fit of hysteria.

She was arguing about the floor being unstable, and how dangerous opening the door could be with a fire inside. Vander heard all of that, but he didn't care.

"You have to be careful!"

Jinx finally managed to tear her arm away from her sister's grasp, and Vander pulled her away just in time. She spun to face him, her twin braids whipping behind her in the motion.

"I'm going in," he firmly said before she could get a word out.

"Vander!"

He pushed the younger sister behind him, Vi side-stepping to follow, reluctantly.

"Don't…"

She didn't finish her sentence, maybe realizing that she wouldn't be able to keep both him and her sister from going in. She was right about the risks, of course, and Vander was aware of them. He just didn't care – not when he could hear the faint sound of someone coughing in the inside, almost drowned out by the fire.

When he lifted Silco's limp body in his arms, cringing at his pained whimper, he distinctly thought that the risks were worth it.

The basement of the Last Drop is completely quiet.

Silco's laying on his back on the couch in the small room next to the one Jinx and her adopted siblings used to sleep, or so she said. He distantly remembers Vander popping his shoulder back into place, the subsequent agony pulling him back from unconsciousness, but he didn't stay awake for long as the man looked over the rest of his injuries. There probably wasn't anything else that needed urgent care, or said care wasn't uncomfortable enough to rouse him up this time.

He slowly sits up, bare feet making contact with the floor, gritting his teeth as the motion tugs on his aching ribs. Nothing seems broken, he can still move his ankle, but at the same time, there is very little of his skin that doesn't sport bruises or scrapes. At least, it doesn't feel like he got too bad of a concussion, if at all; the room doesn't even spin. Maybe the lingering headache is only caused by his eye, as usual. He reaches up to find the wound on his temple has been bandaged already.

There is no sign of life anywhere near, but Vander and the two sisters must be around, so he carefully stands up and limps to the next room, re-buttoning absentmindedly his shirt up to his neck with one hand. The floorboards creek when he walks in. Vander's eyes find his almost immediately, relief flashing across his features.

"You're awake."

Silco doesn't think to answer, because he has just noticed Jinx curled up against Vander's side, sleeping soundly, her mouth slightly open. He knows they have been talking more and more – he walked in on Jinx half-sprawled on the Last Drop counter one afternoon, playing with the straw of her drink, babbling away as she does with him. Nevertheless, never before has Silco seen her so relaxed around anyone other than him, not even her sister, not yet.

"She fell asleep not long ago," Vander whispers to him when Silco carefully sits down next to them both. "Vi's out, fetching Sevika. "

"How is– my office, the Last Drop? How bad is it? I'm guessing the fire was put out if you are there…"

"Yes. Damage's barely visible from the outside, since your window held up. The ceiling collapsed a little, there is a hole in the floorboards in the back room of the bar, but globally the structure held. And wh–"

"My papers?"

"The… the flames barely reached your desk, so I'm hoping most of it is fine."

"Good."

"Silco, what about you? You don't seem too badly concussed, since you're asking about your damn work, but… Do you think we need to contact your… doctor?"

He shakes his head, regretting it as it makes his headache flare up. He tries to suppress his wince.

"No. It just left some bruising."

"I saw that. Your head was bleeding quite a lot though. I… maybe it needs stitches. I just bandaged it."

"I will look at it after. Was I asleep for long?"

"No. Couple of hours."

He wants to get up, pace around, let his thoughts clear up until he can find what to do first, but the surge of pain from his sprained ankle makes him reconsider. He leans back with a frustrated sigh.

"You could have woken me up."

"You…" A pause – a muscle in his jaw working, the tension visible just over the line where beard meets skin. "Fuck, Silco, you could have died."

"I didn't."

Vander stares at him until Silco looks away from the familiar grey eyes.

"What?" he hisses.

"You didn't die because I was still there, at the bar, when I wasn't supposed to be. Jinx and Vi were out. It was sheer luck."

"I could have pulled mys–" He doesn't finish his sentence, as what Vander said really sinks in. "Maybe it wasn't a coincidence the bomb went off right at that moment. It's the only day the Drop is closed, and if someone was– No, it probably wasn't– Was there anything left of the b–"

"Bomb?" Vander cuts him off. "Yes. Jinx thinks it was detonated from a distance. Something fancy, she said… She seemed very interested in it. She could probably tell you more– Oh."

Jinx is steering up against his side, roused in by the use of her name, or maybe solely by the mention of bombs and interesting mechanisms. She squints even in the low light of the lightbulb hanging above their heads, then her eyes go wide.

"You're up!"

She half-crawls over Vander's legs and almost throws herself at Silco, who winces when her knee makes contact with his bruised thigh.

"Eh– Careful, little bird. I'm okay."

"Jinx, don't–"

Vander stops when Silco glares at him, daring him to tell his daughter off, even as the tense line of his jaw makes clear that her embrace is pressing against his fresh injuries. She needs reassurance, so at that moment, that's all that matters.

Eventually, she sits back, still kneeling in between his legs, pushes her hair away, and immediately dives into an explanation of what she discovered from investigating the remains of the dye pack. Amongst the technical terms, Silco catches that it didn't ignite based on a countdown, but that some kind of impulsion was sent. Something way too technical for a small group like Ryker's, especially now that it was missing its leader. One of the Chembarons…? For now, he would say they have more to win with him alive, but again maybe the dye pack was nothing but a warning. Or one of the barons was stupid enough to not realize that, wanted more, too fast.

He has no shortage of enemies.

He disengages his legs from around Jinx and gets up, ignoring the protestations of his sprained ankle. It should be kept in place by his boots; they are tight enough to act as a splint. He doesn't want to bother to go to Singed or anyone else to get it looked at. His body deals with injuries just fine anyway – maybe force of habit, the reason he has even made it to his late forties in Zaun, or maybe a side-effect of taking Shimmer regularly.

"I need to go see a few people. Figure out who set this up before they can try again."

"Silco…"

"What?" he snaps.

He's not in the mood for Vander's new-found mellowness right now. Yeah, so what if "seeing a few people" involves threatening them? He needs to know. It's not the attempt on his life itself that's making it so urgent, it's the challenge to his leadership. He can't have that right now.

"You're not going out alone."

"You say Violet was out to fetch Sevika, right? Then they should arrive soon. I'm going to find a shirt that does not have my blood on it, and I will go with Sevika."

There is an instant of silence, almost enough time for him to reach the bottom of the stairs, then Jinx sighs loudly.

"Silly, he was asking to go with you."

Silco stops with his foot on the first step. Since when does Jinx, of all people, pay attention to what people truly mean, and he missed it? Or perhaps he simply didn't want to understand. He slowly turns, to find Vander looking up at him expectantly, Jinx pressed against him mirroring his expression.

It plays a part, for sure, because he had never been able to say no to his daughter.

"Fine. Wait for me in the bar. I won't be long."

He's absentmindedly swirling the whiskey in his glass, sitting at the Last Drop counter since his office is in shambles, mismatched eyes fixated on his work. The ice cubes have now melted, but the glass is still cold, so he presses it to his temple at times in an attempt to numb the throbbing. The swelling is slightly impacting his vision, already blurred by the lack of sleep and his bad eye. The headache pulsates in rhythm with his heart.

He presses a bit too hard on his pen and the nib rips through the paper. His exhale hisses in between his clenched teeth. It bled too, the pen, ink slowly seeping through, staining his notes and the side of his hand. Exasperated, he pushes it all away, not caring that it knocks over another stack of documents and a barely-touched plate, loudly clattering to the ground.

"Silco?"

Vander's voice, from the sink a few steps away where he's washing the blood from his hands, a note of worry in his tone. He turns fully when Silco doesn't answer.

"Everything's okay?"

"I'm sitting down and it's only the two of us, Vander, what do you think could fucking happen?"

He continues to glare at the mess on the floor, massaging his non-bruised temple with one hand to try and ease the headache. After a while, the water starts running again behind his back.

At least their little tour of the Chembarons was met with success – and a fair share of odd glances when they noticed Vander's large figure trailing right behind him, quiet and obedient, seemingly taking to heart his self-appointed role of a bodyguard. It certainly proved useful when Chross's underling tried to break for a run. He might have a broken jaw now.

It's a whole mess Silco would have to entangle if he wants things to keep running as soon as possible, a mess of resentment, broken promises, and burning ambitions, the whole damn thing without a drop of cleverness added to the mix. He swears under his breath.

His spine pops when he sits straighter. He goes to stretch and immediately regrets it with a pained grimace. The bruises left behind by Ryker had barely faded that new ones had bloomed, starker on his thighs and around his injured shoulder. Thankfully, it's not the left one, the shoulder, so he can still write without discomfort. All in all, he considers himself lucky because apart from his temple and a slight limp, when he's fully dressed it's hard to even believe he was caught in a blast. It could have been so much worse.

"I didn't thank you," he says out of the blue, slowly starting to put his papers back into order on the counter in front of him.

"Uh? Sorry, what?"

"I didn't thank you," Silco repeats. "For… helping me out."

"Help– Yeah. Okay. Uh, you're welcome? I…"

He can feel the weight of Vander's gaze on him, but he refuses to turn around and face him.

"Silco, I was really scared when it clicked that the blast was in your office. I thought you… I don't want to lose you."

He glances over his shoulder then, opening his mouth– but Vander continues before he could get a word in, echoing his thoughts:

"Not again."

There are a few moments of silence after that, before the scratching of Silco's pen on paper fills the air again.

"What changed?" he asks, tone flat, as if the answer did not matter. "You never even tried to reconnect, during all these years. Not a word."

"I told you; I thought you didn't want that." There is a hint of frustration in his voice, that quickly dissipates before his next sentence: "You… would have had all reasons to. But now, I… feel like we have another shot?"

Silco snorts, and doesn't bother to reply to that. Not long after, he hears Vander walk away.